A reversible compression code hiding using SOC and SMVQ indices

Reversible data hiding recovers the original images without distortion after the secret data are extracted, so it has received considerable attention among researchers in recent years. This work presents a novel reversible data hiding scheme based on the search-order coding (SOC) algorithm and side match vector quantization (SMVQ). The compression performance is improved by encoding the index with either SOC or SMVQ during the data embedding phase. The index of an image block also is encoded by using a few bits, thus improving the compression rate. During the extracting phase, the receiver uses simple steps to extract the secret data and reconstruct the original SMVQ compression code. Our experimental results indicated that, using a size 64 state codebook, the average compression rate with our scheme was 0.41 bpp, which is much better than the compression rates of Chang et al.’s, Yang and Lin’s, and Yang et al.’s schemes, i.e., 0.50, 0.54, and 0.56 bpp, respectively. Furthermore, in addition to reducing the time required for the embedding and extracting phases, the proposed scheme yields a higher embedding rate than the schemes of Yang and Lin and Yang et al.